


Just Believe In Me Like I Believe In You

by MsDamia



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Darcy has stupid moments, Drama, F/M, Feels, Gen, Jane is rather protective, Some Humor, Sometimes I get mad at characters for being stupid and try to kill them, This is fairly emo, character injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsDamia/pseuds/MsDamia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wasn’t sure what she was actually mad about this time. Maybe she was just mad that he was mad at her for being mad. She could admit to having some twisted girl logic at times, something which drove him absolutely crazy. He was far too pragmatic to deal with that kind of bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Believe In Me Like I Believe In You

“Fine! If I piss you off that much I may as well just fucking leave!” Darcy threw a pillow at the couch and stomped over to the little table by the door she always threw her purse on. 

“Fine.” Clint’s voice was icy and the word snapped short. Darcy turned and glared at him for a moment before heading right out the door, giving it a hard yank to make sure it shut hard enough to vibrate the walls. If she was lucky one of his precious weapons would fall off it’s stupid little hooks and land on the floor. 

She wasn’t sure what she was actually mad about this time. Maybe she was just mad that he was mad at her for being mad. She could admit to having some twisted girl logic at times, something which drove him absolutely crazy. He was far too pragmatic to deal with that kind of bullshit. So what had she done? She’d screamed at him. That was what she always did. He didn’t shout back at her though, not this time. 

Darcy stopped less than four feet from the door and pressed her back against the wall, sliding down to the floor and huffing out a sigh. God she was a moron. He’d been gone for two weeks, practically no time at all for a SHIELD operative of his caliber, all things considered. Of course he was easier to spot in a crowd with the Avenger footage from New York, so he couldn’t really do all the fun espionage stuff any more. Even so, though, he was gone often enough. It was his job. His life. She wasn’t sure if Clint loved what he did, but the man certainly enjoyed it. 

She’d missed him. A hell of a lot more than she would ever be willing to admit out loud. So, in true Lewis fashion, she had started attacking him as soon as those stupid, soft, squishy feelings started trying to make themselves known. Comments about not getting calls, despite knowing that would never happen and not actually expecting them anyway. It had gone down hill from there. Quickly. If there was something Darcy had long ago mastered it was pushing people's buttons. 

The girl scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed again, softer this time. She was a fucking mess. One deep breath later the brunette nodded and stood up, squaring her shoulders. She might be a fucking mess, but she still had pride. It was that thing that cameth before the falleth or whatever. She turned and walked down to the end of the hall, pressed the button for the elevator. A few minutes later she was out of his building (a rather swanky building with a doorman who was always trying to call her a cab rather than let her walk down the street to the subway station) and heading away. She didn’t have a specific direction in mind, she just needed to walk away while she still could. 

She was in love with that stupid man. At least she was pretty sure it was love, she’d never actually been in love before so she couldn’t be sure, but she’d never felt like what she was feeling right now. If love was even stronger she wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to feel that way. The thought of something more than this was quite scary. Not quite as scary as, say, breaking his heart and then coming face to face with Natasha, but still scary. Of course, that was if Clint magically felt something even _close_ to what she was feeling. 

God, she hated all this. That stupid bubbly sensation that zipped through her limbs when she caught sight of him in a crowd. The feeling like she could float away because she was so happy to just be near him. The way she couldn’t stop herself from leaning closer every time she was standing or sitting next to him, as though she were some nitwit little tween who felt like she had to be touching him to prove he was really there. What the hell was she becoming? Last night she had actually used his key and slept in his apartment, in his bed, because she had missed him. The smell of his soap was still on the sheets and she’d found it comforting, she might have also cried in his pillow (just a little bit!), but there was no proof, so she could hide the shame deep inside where no one would see it. 

And then he’d come home, she’d rushed over to see him, and less than an hour later she’d yelled at him. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes and she sniffed them back, lifting her hands up to press the gloves to her cheeks. She laughed wetly when she realized she’d left her mittens in Clint’s apartment. Her scarf was still wrapped around her neck and her hat was still perched over her dark, curly hair, but her hands were already getting chapped from the cold. It was ridiculous. She really was a child sometimes, wasn’t she? 

The tears started to fall and she hurried up her steps, pulling her scarf up higher, trying to cover her face so people wouldn’t notice the tracks her tears were making down her face. At least it wasn’t cold enough to freeze the watery marks, that would certainly be hard to explain to people. Stupid Clint and his stupid face! This was all his fault! He was the one who made her act like this, that made her _feel_ like this. Him and his stupid, gorgeous arms and that sneaky little smile which promised wicked things to come. The brunette paused at the bottom of the stairs and glanced over her shoulder at the gray light from above. 

She was angry and sad and feeling stupid and now all she wanted was Clint. Clint made her feel better. Her cold fingers dropped into her pocket and pulled out the iPhone which so offended Tony. She stared at it silently, ignoring as people bumped into her and told her to keep moving. Her fingers hovered, tracing the pattern to unlock the screen and then tapping buttons until Clint’s sneaky grin filled the entire screen. She lifted the phone to her ear and waited. It rang once, twice, three times. Was he going to ignore her? He picked up on the fourth, but didn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry.” It came out as a sob. She hadn’t planned to open with that line, but she was known to let her mouth run without connecting it to her brain first. She heard him sigh and she cried harder, leaning forward and hunching her shoulders in. She hated this feeling more than anything else, there was a pain radiating throughout her. It was trying to stop her from breathing, this sucked so much more than she could possibly explain. 

“Darce.” Clint stopped and sighed again. She could hear him scrubbing a hand over his face, his calloused fingers rubbing against the blonde stubble on his cheeks and chin. He did that when he was too tired to verbalize a response. How a fast talker like herself had ended up with a man of so few words was completely beyond her, but it worked. Sort of. It would if she could just explain her brand of crazy and the newness of her feelings and the way they had been eating at her for the last few weeks. 

“I know.” She was still crying, but she _did_ know. She knew she drove him crazy and when she yelled at him it usually was because of something _she_ did, not something he did. She yelled because she was mad at herself, not because she was mad at him. She was loud, maybe too loud, but she was used to people pushing her away and so she pushed them away first because at least then it was her choice. She wasn’t being abandoned if she was running away, there was a logic there that people who’d had good childhoods would never understand. 

“Were you sleeping in my bed while I was gone?” A sad huff of laughter filtered through the phone. Like he wanted to be angry at her but he couldn’t be. She sniffed back her tears and smiled.

“I missed you.” She told him. She should have said that when she first saw him. Instead she had walked through his door, stared at him for a few long minutes, and then told him he looked like crap. She hadn’t meant it and he’d laughed before he pulled her into his arms. 

“I didn’t want you to leave.” He admitted a moment later, a soft thump and rustling fabric came through the phone. He was laying down, the dark circles under his eyes had told her just how tired he was and she’d still poked at him until he had no choice but to freeze up. He did it to protect himself. He froze up and she ran off. What a pair they made. 

“I didn’t want to fall in love with you.” She admitted after a moment, a sad smile spreading across her lips. 

“Come back.” It was a whisper and Darcy rubbed a knuckled under her eyes, her smile growing larger. 

“I’ll be right there.” She hung up and turned around, hurrying down the stairs and then taking off down the sidewalk at a dead run. The tread on her boots was worn down, but they were her favorites and had been broken in long ago so there wasn’t anything quite as comfortable. Jane liked to tease her about it sometimes and Tony had asked if she needed a raise, but she loved them. They weren’t made for icy, winter sidewalks, though. She dodged a group of tourists, shouting a quick apology over her shoulder, and got knocked over by a group of teenagers goofing off. She fell sideways into the path of an ugly Range Rover, shouting in surprise and pain as she bounced across icy pavement and rolled sideways. A taxi zipped out from behind the suv, hoping to dodge around it, and all she saw was the dented fender coming at her face while she was still too dazed to move. 

She blinked her eyes open and a man was babbling in his phone, wanting to know what her name was. She couldn’t answer him, though, and closed her eyes for a moment. There were men in dark blue talking to her, putting something over her face. It wasn’t comfortable, but she couldn’t bring herself to bother telling them. She blinked slowly, people were talking quickly around her and she couldn’t feel anything but pain. She wanted to yel,l but she couldn’t open her mouth and there was that noise, the long, high pitched whine and someone said something about losing …

It was hours before Darcy would open her eyes again. When she did Jane was sitting, her knees pulled up to her chin, on an ugly brown chair. It was possibly the most uncomfortable thing Darcy had ever seen the other woman do, and that was including when they’d had too many shots of tequila in Puente Antiguo and the woman had decided to show the entire bar just how flexible she was. She tried to talk, but all that came out was a croak. The scientist unfolded herself and darted to the side of the bed, her hands hovering over the other woman like she wanted to touch her but was afraid. 

“Your jaw is swollen, don’t try to talk just yet.” Jane’s eyes looked extra dark, surrounded as they were by dark circles and a face more pale than Darcy was used to seeing. She didn’t cry, Jane Foster wasn’t a cryer, she was a doer and a worrier and she would sit back quietly and stare without blinking for far too long, but she didn’t cry. Jane’s face was dry and the younger woman took comfort in it, if Jane had been crying she wouldn’t have known how to handle it. 

“You were hit by a car. Well, two cars.” Jane told her seriously, reciting facts. The older woman took comfort in facts and figures, it was why she was such a good scientist - numbers were her happy places and she had the imagination to want to change the universe. She listed off the injuries Darcy had sustained, the number of times she had flat lined and the fact that she had been unconscious for almost two full days. Two days in which Jane hadn’t left the hospital for more than an hour at a time. 

“Clint?” Yeah, it definitely hurt to talk, but Jane had done her the solid of pressing the painkiller button - she’d have to think of a better name for it. Jane’s face crumpled a bit and the beeping on the monitors off to the side sped up. Apparently they were hooked up to her and she’d managed to miss it at first. Proof that she really was out of it. 

“Natasha made him leave.” Jane admitted quietly, glancing out the door as though someone might have heard her. She wasn’t allowed more than two guests at a time, ICU rules, but Natasha had come back as well. It wasn’t all that surprising, you didn’t tell Natasha what to do, but it implied that something had happened. 

“What?” Single syllable words only, definitely. She wanted to know what had happened, but Jane avoided her eyes and turned around. 

“I should go get your nurse.” The other woman said, walking away from the brunette as the woman’s eyes drifted shut against her will. Asleep for three days and she was still exhausted. 

It went like that for a week, Darcy falling asleep shortly after people came to visit. Apparently Clint had made “A scene,” which had involved him losing his shit with a doctor and getting banned from the ICU. It was all a huge to do and she’d been asleep through the entire thing, it was extremely frustrating. Especially as she needed him to be there, she wanted to see him, to talk to him. She needed him and she hadn’t really figured out how much until just recently. She cried, more than once, when people told her she couldn’t see him. When she got better she would blame it on the drugs, but it wasn’t all drugs. A lot of it was fear that he actually didn’t _want_ to be here with her. 

It took a week, but Darcy was talking better (her jaw still hurt) and Jane had promised that she would get Clint in if she had to figure out a way to fly him through the window herself. Thankfully it didn’t come to that, after all the man was a spy. Between him and Natasha they got in just fine and when Darcy woke up he was leaning against the wall watching her. She stared back at him for a few long, silent moments, a smile on her lips. Then she opened her mouth and, as always, words tumbled out without a filter.

“People say that when you have a near death experience your life flashes in front of your eyes. Like you see all the major points racing like some kind of twisted slideshow of your time on Earth. It’s pretty messed up when you think about it. I mean, it’s like your brain is mocking you for having such a pointless existence or something. Thankfully my near death experience didn’t involve some twisted family vacation montage. Instead I had a moment of perfect clarity.” Darcy felt the sad grin tug at her mouth and she leaned back in her pillows, staring calmly at Clint. 

“What did you learn?” The man asked, face stiff and unreadable as he leaned against the wall. Natasha was just outside keeping an eye out for anyone that might take offense to the man being back in ICU. 

“I need you. Always.” Darcy told him, smiling softly as his jaw clenched and he hunched his shoulders like a little kid. “Marry me?” She asked, her smile growing. 

“Damnit, Darcy.” The words were soft and followed with a quiet huff of laughter as the man pulled out a tiny manilla envelope from his pocket, striding to her bed. He opened it slowly and shook out the contents into his hand, carefully holding it up so she could look at it. 

“This is probably the worst idea we’ve ever had.” She told him as she looked at the ring he was holding up. It was a simple platinum band, no gemstones, just a love knot engraved around the outside. It was beautiful and just the kind of thing she preferred. 

“You’re going to turn into bridezilla.” Clint agreed, a grin tweaking his lips up at the corners. 

“Probably. Might be best to just head down to Vegas with some friends.” Darcy told him, the grin spreading across her own lips.

“First you’ll have to get your lazy butt out of this bed.” Clint told her, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to her lips. 

“I thought you liked my lazy butt in bed.” She waggled her eyebrows at him but Clint didn’t grin back. 

“Not here.” He told her, completely serious. He hated the hospital. He hated it more while she was in it. 

“Well then you better get me out of here.” She informed him tartly, drawing a huff of laughter out of the man. 

“Give it another week, kid, then you’ll be out of here and back where you belong.” He promised, pulling out a marker to start doodling on her arm around the random schematics and commentary Jane and Tony had decorated the cast with already. Her leg cast was even worse. 

“Your bed?” She asked innocently, her eyes wide as she blinked at him slowly. He chuckled louder as he drew a little bow and arrow. 

“Yes.” He agreed, smiling down at her and making those stupid bubbly feelings start up in her chest again. 

“You know I’m still going to scream at you, right?” She warned him. It was going to happen, it was a simple truth that they might as well own now. 

“As long as we can keep having make-up sex.” Clint told her with a shrug. Darcy scowled at him. 

“Time to go.” Natasha told them, coming into fully into the room and smiling down at Darcy for a moment before turning her attention to Clint. The archer leaned forward and kissed Darcy again, this time not even a little gentle. She’d had wonderful dreams that started with a kiss like that. The only way that kiss could have been better was if she had been able to run her hands up his arms.

“We’ll be back.” Clint promised. 

“I know.” Darcy smiled at him and then turned her attention to the red head. “Next time can you bring real candy with the eye candy?” The assassin cocked an eyebrow, but nodded after a moment. 

“I love you.” Clint told her, standing up. It was the first time he’d said it and it was in a hospital which he was technically banned from. 

“I love you, too.” She responded, tears cropping up in her eyes. She was broken in a hospital bed, and yet the moment still seemed perfect. What did they say about the two of them? She watched him smile brightly and clap Natasha on the shoulder, practically bouncing as he left the room with his partner in tow. 

Broken arm, broken leg, engagement ring. Somehow everything kind of seemed worth it. Love definitely made you stupid.


End file.
